Handbag on the Train

Digital art collage by Stella Kalaw

There are moments when time stands still, and the heart stops. That day, it was my heart that stopped. But as you see, I’m alive to tell the tale.

Almost at the end of a marvellous, once-in-a-lifetime, months-long stay in France, I got on a train. An acquaintance leaving on vacation had sent me the key to her empty apartment in Montpellier and invited me to move in for a week. At 7:15 p.m., after a long journey, I got off the train and walked out of the Montpellier station heading for the apartment, towing my wheeled suitcase, backpack on my back, planning what to buy for dinner.

And then, in a blinding moment of nausea and panic, I realized I did not have my handbag. I did not have my handbag. It was still on the train.

How much can flash into the brain in an instant. In the handbag: my wallet with all my money and credit cards. My passport. The keys to the flat in Montpellier. My camera, address book, and phone.

Screaming "No!" aloud, I ran, flying back into the station to find the train, which was going on to Marseilles. Maybe it'd still be there. I couldn't run fast enough with my suitcase, so I charged into the magazine store, dumped the case by the counter shouting, "Je retourne!" and ran out again, with the woman crying after me that it was forbidden to leave bags anywhere. I tore down the stairs and up to the platform. The track was empty.

No train. No train. No handbag. My mouth was so dry, I couldn't swallow and wanted to be sick. I walked back, retrieved my suitcase with the woman still shrieking about terrorism, and found the Acceuil, the office that handles traveller’s problems. Luckily two officials were still at work. I blurted out the problem: no money, no cards, no key, no phone, no nothing. Night coming on. No one to call.

"The train is non-stop to Marseilles," the man shrugged. "Nothing we can do, madame." He scrawled some big numbers on a piece of paper, as if for a child. "This is the Lost and Found in Marseilles," he said. "Call when the train gets in and hope someone has turned it in."

And he went back to reading. His solution for me: to somehow call Marseilles, to somehow get there if my bag had been found. No help at all. Thank God, I thought, I speak French. What if I couldn’t?

I refused to go away, as he so clearly wanted, and continued to stand there. “I have no phone and no money, how can I call? What should I do, monsieur?” I repeated, nicely but firmly. “What should I do, I’m alone and penniless.” The men in the office said they’d contact the controller on the train, but fifteen minutes later, as I sat in desperation and it got darker outside, nothing had happened. Where could I go for help? I knew no one here. Was there a Canadian consulate in Montpellier?

Then by chance a uniformed man who was obviously a big honcho arrived. I cornered him and poured out my story, and he put things into motion. They called the train. Luckily I could remember: car 15, seat 54. I could remember the clothes the woman opposite me was wearing and the little girl on her lap; we’d smiled at each other several times. Would she have noticed the bag? Would she steal the bag? Would someone else steal the bag?

Or maybe I didn't do this stupid thing, I thought suddenly, maybe I'd dropped it coming out of the station ... No, I remembered putting my handbag down on the seat behind me while I shrugged on the backpack and pulled down my suitcase. I was thinking about the woman with the restless child, how sorry I was for her they had another two hours of travel. And I'd turned and walked away.

The news came, at last: the controller had found the bag! Incredible relief. I didn't know if my wallet and other valuables were still in it, but he'd found the bag.

They told me the last train of the day was leaving in an hour for Marseilles, I should get that train. “I have no money,” I said. They printed me a ticket. I asked them to please fill my empty water bottle, and they gave me a bottle of cold water and lent me a pen, as I had no pen. I understood from them the train got into Marseilles at quarter to midnight, and the Lost and Found closed at midnight.

“What if the train is late and the office closes?” I asked. “I'll be in Marseilles at midnight with nothing.”

“N'inquietez pas, madame,” said the man. Don’t worry, lady. Easy for him to say.

With an hour to wait and no money for food, I wanted to go to the bathroom yet couldn't use the one in the station because it cost fifty cents. But the McDonald's across the street had free wifi — the first and I hope only time my heart has burst with joy to walk into a McDonald’s. I used the bathroom, got my computer out of my backpack — thank God that was with me — and emailed my children in Toronto and my best friend Chris far away in Vancouver. If this Canadian was found homeless and babbling, wandering the streets of Marseilles, they'd know how it happened.

The train pulled in, and I got on. They’d given me a first-class ticket. Such kindness — I could not have appreciated more the quiet luxury of first class, the nice big seats. And looking more closely at the ticket, I realized the train got in at 10:45, not 11:45. Lots of time to get to the Lost and Found. My only concern was whether my valuables would still be in place.

As we pulled out of Montpellier, there was the most glorious sunset, a wash of streaky pinks and blues, mesmerizing. And I remembered the other times when my heart stopped. The worst was when my dad called to say, "They've found something, Bethie, and it's not good." When I was delivering my firstborn, and the doctor suddenly could hear no heartbeat. "Let's get this baby born, now!" she cried, and I pushed with all the strength on the planet. When bad things happened to my kids; events around my divorce. Those were the times that mattered. This was only stuff. This was not health, not love, not life and death, only carelessness and stuff.

Still, my friends, I was one happy woman when the man at the Lost and Found office in the Marseilles train station brought me my handbag, and everything was inside — passport, wallet, cards, phone. "Vous avez de la chance," he said. Yes, I am very very lucky. Thank you. Merci beaucoup!

Now, get this: I went straight to the Acceuil in the station to enquire about trains back to Montpellier the next day, and then left to find a hotel, clutching my handbag tight, tight to my body. Outside the station, I realized I'd left my suitcase in the Acceuil. I was concentrating so hard on my handbag, I'd forgotten the suitcase.

Definitely time to go home.

It was 1 a.m. before I collapsed in a shabby but clean Marseilles hotel room, was to get out my computer, write this story, and post it on my blog.

Because that’s my job.